Na Na Na to Nan

"Na Na Na"  The Knife  Silent Shout
"Nadine"  Chuck Berry  Chuck Berry:  The Anthology
"Naima [alternate take]"  John Coltrane  Giant Steps
"Naked As We Came"  Iron & Wine  Our Endless Numbered Days
"Naked Cousin"  PJ Harvey  The Peel Sessions 1991 - 2004
"Naked Eye"  Luscious Jackson  Whatever: The 90s Pop & Culture Box
"Naked Eye"  The Who  Who's Next [bonus cd track]
"Names" Cat Power  You Are Free
"A Namorada [Afro Latin Edit]"  Carlinhos Brown  The Best Latin Party Album  . . . Ever
"Nan"  Booker T. Jones  Potato Hole

So it has been a long time since I wrote anything.  Not apologizing or harping on it, just saying.

An old set of songs - I think the most recent song on the list is by a 70-year old organist.  The weirdest, most dated thing about the videos is the way everyone in the Luscious Jackson video is just wandering around the airport.  If they made it now, the song would be over before anyone got their shoes back on.

I saw Booker T. with my dad not long ago.  My dad had no idea who he was, but I think he had a good time.  He and I went to see John Lee Hooker when I was about 20, and he bestowed a great collection of blues & rock records on me some time ago (He is most proud of the Chess and Checker singles). He has no reference for Stax/Volt though (or Motown or Fame or much in the way of soul at all . . . ).  So it was nice to introduce him to  someone & something I knew and appreciated and that I thought he would enjoy.  Now this is always a dicey prospect with my father because he is . . . not like other humans.  Most people can find their way through an event that someone else brings them to without feeling threatened or without needing to demonstrate their own superiority.  If they don't like something on its merits, so be it, but I think most folk can find their way to like something even if it is not something they brought to the table.  Not so my father - generally if he is not at the center of it, it is of no value, or at the very least inferior.  But I invited him, and he came.  As I said, he knows and loves Chess blues, so it is clearly the best music ever.  Everything else doesn't really exist.

So we met at this little jazz club in Cleveland and caught the early show.  Booker T. played a wide range of material - from "Green Onions" & "Hip Hug-Her" through things off Potato Hole (the album he made with the Drive-By Truckers) and newer material.  He played guitar on a couple of numbers, and even sang "All Along The Watchtower".  His backing band were all much younger, and his drummer rapped during a few songs.  I had a great time, and I think my dad enjoyed himself as well.  I was worried throughout that he was not enjoying himself, but (except for a brief moment when he was talking with the gentleman at the table behind us about Gestalt psychology . . . another issue) he was engaged and enthusiastic.  

He almost made it, too.  I almost got away through the entire evening just enjoying something someone else had done, without turning it back on himself.  After we left the club, and walked through the parking lot, as he was about to open his car door, he turns to me and says, "He is no Howlin' Wolf."

Here is a video of Booker T singing "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay" With the DBTs behind him.  Awesome^3.

Macarena to The Madness of Love

"Macarena [Bay Side Boys Mix]"  Los Del Rio  The Best Latin Party Album in the World . . . Ever
"Machine Gun"  Slowdive  Souvlaki
"Machito Forever [Cut Chemist Remix]"  Tito Puente  Brazil Classics: Belaza Tropical Vol. 2
"Madder"  Groove Armada  Lovebox
"Madder Red"  Yeasayer  Odd Blood
"Madeline"  Yo La Tengo  And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
"Madison Square"  Lettuce  Fly
"The Madison Time"  Ray Bryant Combo  Hairspray [Original Soundtrack - 1988]
"Madness"  Miles Davis  Nefertiti
"The Madness of Love"  Graham Parker  Beat The Retreat: Songs by Richard Thompson

Another cover of which I don't currently own the original.  Which is particularly strange because there was a point in the past where I had practically everything in Richard Thompson's catalog - including this, which was on a cassette-only collection of RT obscurities.  But the grind of time, travel, and a general disrespect for most of my possessions and things go away.  The cassette - Doom and Gloom from the Tomb, Vol. 1, was a fan-club only distribution that the owner of this record store I went to all the time offered up to me in the late-80s because he noticed I kept coming in and buying Richard Thompson and Fairport stuff.  When you are catching up on a 25-year catalogue in a matter of months, I guess.  I regret the loss of a lot of my old music (it feels like I have somehow built-up and lost my music collection several times through my life, and then had to re-create it from memory), but this one in particular stings.  My rule of downloading the original when faced with only having the cover is thwarted - the Doom and Gloom cassette doesn't show up anywhere on the internet.  The version on that tape is a Richard & Linda recording that is not available anywhere else.  There is a live version available as a bonus-track on later reissues of Live, Love, Larf & Loaf by French, Frith, Kaiser, Thompson, so getting that might be as close as I get . . . but the bonus tracks are not available for download.  So I might be getting that whole album - which isn't all bad since it is one that I used to have (pre-bonus tracks) and needs replaced anyway.

For all the music of the 80s I have lost, so much music of the 90s just kind of went past me the first time through.  Shoegaze is becoming something of an infatuation recently, about 20 years too late, but just in time for a new MBV album for the first time in a thousand years.  We may also be reaching a shoegaze revival ("newgaze?") in the nostalgia/influence cycle - see Tamaryn - so maybe I can keep up with this sudden new trend the second time.  I can take solace in the idea that if the radio seems content to have missed most music in the last 40 years, trying to catch up to shit that I missed 15-20 puts me ahead of the curve.

It is a testament to its ubiquity that even my sad self could not miss the Macarena, and '94-'95 was probably as deep into my cave as I ever was.  Having a well-marketed earworm is as good a path to financial security as any I guess.

L Y F to La Collectionneuse

"L Y F"  Wu Lyf  Go Tell Fire To The Mountain
"L.A. County"  Lyle Lovett  Pontiac
"La Bamba"  Ritchie Valens  The Best of Ritchie Valens
"La Bayamesa"  Buena Vista Social Club  Buena Vista Social Club
"La Belle S'Est Etourdie"  Kate & Anna McGarrigle  The French Record
"La Bikina"  Esquivel  Music from a Sparkling Planet
"La Califfa"  Ennio Morricone  Film Music by Ennio Morricone
"La Camisa Negra"  Juanes  Mi Sangre [studio & live]
"La Camisa Negra (Sonida National Remix)"  Juanes/Sonida National  Mi Sangre
"La Collectionneuse"  Charlotte Gainsbourg  IRM

Once again it has been just about forever between posts.  To the extent it is kind of ludicrous to even try to explain why, or to even suggest that it will get better.  Whatever.  The problems remain the same - the music comes in a little faster than I can keep up and catalog it.  The Wu Lyf album is a prime example - the songs I come across, this one included, are consistently engaging when they float to the top, but then they disappears and gets lost behind the rest of life and other songs and go knows what all, and suddenly it is an album I have had for over a year and have not played in 8 months.

It is kind of true with everything, and maybe it is a part of getting older - you just get busy.  Life gets more demanding as you get older - the job becomes more involved, your daily life becomes more . . . occupied.  The stuff piles on, but the days don't get any longer.  And you just . . . and this really sucks . . . you just aren't as young as you were.  The days actually become shorter because suddenly you have to sleep at night.  Partly because your job is no longer just a job, but a career, and if you don't show up and you get fired there isn't another shitty food-service job that is going to pay you the same amount just around the corner.  There are people and things that depend on you, and you accept that responsibility.  So something has to give, and maybe that something is your ability to go to shows a few nights a week, to just buy and listen to new music on a whim just because you read a review, or heard a clip or just liked the name or needed to get out of the house.  And you certainly don't waste whole weekend days or late nights just trying to catch up on the music you may have missed.  You just don't have time.

Or maybe that is all bullshit.  It hasn't been my job that has gotten in the way of me doing this - other leisure activities - reading, TV, video games, just sitting around doing nothing, all at turns have taken more of my energy and focus over the past year than traversing my music library.
 
Regardless, here we are again.  Since the first of the year, I have been trying to get out to more shows, and see more bands, and am again trying to get a grasp on the music collection. That is going reasonably well. It isn't exactly a resolution, it is just more a feeling of giving myself permission to go out. Sometimes it is easy to fall into a routine of staying at home, or at least being home at a reasonable hour.  And reasonable hours and bar shows do not always go hand-in-hand.  Another part of that is trying again to get a firmer grasp on the music I have (and still keep growing my collection).

I do want to keep discovering new music.  I just hate "CLASSIC ROCK" - not the music itself, I actually really like a lot of that late 60s, early 70s guitar rock that has been pushed down my throat for the entirety of my life.  But the title, and the attitude.  I despise the idea that somehow there is a period of music that is intrinsically better, more important, more pure, than any other, and particularly anything that came later.  I don't think it is an attitude inherent to baby boomers, but because they are the most abundant generation on the planet, they are the most visible, and have been able to control the narrative of music for a long time.

But that isn't really the issue here.  The issue is that I don't want to be that guy - I don't want to be an '80s-'90s guy whose musical taste has calcified around a few bands from Minneapolis and Seattle a thousand years ago.  I really think we are entering a golden age for music - in terms of its availability, its variety, its vibrancy.  I don't want to miss it because I am playing Tim for the millionth time.

It is hard to reconcile, when for years I was among the youngest people at a show, that suddenly I might well be the oldest.  I am trying to embrace that - I stay in the back now (no one wants to see their dad in the pit).  I buy better beer.  I tip well.  I try to buy merch (CDs, not a t-shirt I am never going to wear) because these kids half my age probably could use the cash.

On the other hand . . . I still really like Tim.  There are songs in everyone's life that they know so well that at their mere mention - the title, a lyric - they not only hear it, but have an emotional response.  You have to keep time for those songs.  Just because I know every note to "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" doesn't keep me from playing More Fun In The New World every month or so.  I am just trying to find a balance - I don't want to become rigid, but I don't want to be looking for new music just because it is new.
 
Anyway - a  lot of foreign language songs here, given iTunes' inability to strip articles in French or Spanish the way it throws away "the."

So . . .

Girls  "Lust For Life"  Album

  A long while ago, maybe 20 years, my old man (father, not male partner) was faced with one of many challenges to his early boomer worldview (class of '60).  As a member of a Unitarian Universalist church in the suburbs of Cleveland, he was faced with a number of his peers, now in their forties, suddenly divorcing their wives and taking up with new partners who just happened to be men.  My dad, being still a bit awesome . . .

  It has been a steady decline in awesomeness for my old man From teenage early-adopter of Chess and Checker Blues and Rock, to mid-life embracer of the white-liberal faith of Unitarian-Universalism to second-divorce visitor of "singles camps" to septuagenarian global-warming denier, he has been on a strangely wrong trajectory . . .

  As I was saying, while still awesome, my old man reflected upon this seemingly more than occasional occurrence of his baby-boomer friends leaving their long-term relationships for a mid-life, same-sex partnership, and he told me, "I guess I get it.  Frankly, at this point, I don't really care who is lying in the bed next to me as long as they leave me the fuck alone."

  Also, on November 6, for the first-through-fourth time ever, same-sex marriage was upheld at the ballot box in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington.  And the supreme court justice in Iowa that conservatives were trying to oust because he had upheld marriage equality through the state constitution won reelection.

  And there is this video for this song, which I like not because it is porn (which I guess it is if singing into a penis like it is a microphone is porn), but because everyone in it is young and dumb and full and it doesn't much matter who it is they are rolling around with.  "Maybe if I really tried with all of my heart, then I could make a brand new start in love with you . . ."

  That is the bottom line and why I have never (and really never) given a shit about a person's sexual identity.  It is really hard to find someone you want to be with for more than even a drink, let alone an evening or god forbid a lifetime.  To have someone else telling you that the person you choose is somehow wrong . . . who needs to deal with that.  If there has ever been an even quasi-legitimate reason for nosing into someone else's bedroom beyond a parent's selfish fear they may not get grandkids, I don't see it. Even that is based solely in vengeance, and therefore pretty base.

  It doesn't matter your damage, which comes in all shapes and sizes.  And it doesn't matter your cure, which are equally as varied.  Everyone is looking for the person(s) that make(s) them complete and helps them get through the next few hours, next days, next months, years, decades.  As my old man slides into an ultra-conservative convalescence, I guess we can take heart that the nation as a whole is moving more toward awesome and no one much cares who is lying in bed next to you, even if they don't just leave you the fuck alone.

Kangaroo to Katalon

"Kangaroo"  Big Star  Third/Sister Lovers
"Kansas City"  Albert King  Born Under A Bad Sign
"The Kansas City Song"  Buck Owens  The Very Best Of Buck Owens, Vol. 1
"Kashmir's Corn"  Victoria Williams  Musings of a Creek Dipper
"Katey vs. Nobby"  Galactic  Ya-Ka-May
"Kathelin Gray"  Ornette Coleman & Pat Metheny  Song X
"Kathy's Song"  Simon & Garfunkel  Sounds of Silence
"Kathy's Waltz"  Dave Brubeck Quartet  Time Out
"Katie's Been Gone"  The Band  The Basement Tapes
"Katolon"  Salif Keita  Moffou

So I have been paralyzed about writing for a while.  Some things have been keeping me busy, but mostly I just get on the site and stare at the screen and feel overwhelmed.  I am going to try to keep the posts [a bit] shorter and [much] more frequent from here on out - it may well mean some posts just kind of suck.  But maybe something is better than nothing at all.  Hopefully some will be Sometimes it can just be the rantings of a madman - that is the essence of the internet, after all.

The Song from this set is without doubt "Katey vs. Nobby" - New Orleans rhythms, P-Funk synthesizer, two Sissy Rap MCs . . . everything about it just beats you up, and it has a verse about Popeye's Chicken . . . wish there was a decent video.  Instead, all you get is ass everywhere.

Half Marathon Playlist

"Early In The Mornin'"  Johnny Lee Moore & Prisoners  Southern Journey Vol.5: Bad Man Ballads
"Go Outside"  Cults  Cults
"Iko Iko"  The Dixie Cups  Chapel of Love
"All Eyez On Me"  2Pac  All Eyez On Me
"Grown Up"  Danny Brown
"Bhangra Fever"  MIDIval PunditZ  Six Degrees 100
"Boe Money"  Galactic  Ya-Ka-May
"Theme from Black Belt Jones"  Dennis Coffey  Can You Dig It? Music & Politics of Black Action Films
"Higher Ground"  Stevie Wonder  Innervisions
"Get Some"  Lykke Li  Wounded Rhymes
"Racehorse"  Wild Flag  Wild Flag
"Whole Hog" (live)  Sebadoh  Lounge Ax Defense & Relocation CD
"Precious Lord Lead Me On"  Sister Gertrude Morgan/King Britt  King Britt Presents Sister Gertrude Morgan
"Midnight City"  M83  Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
"You Put A Smell On Me"  Matthew Dear  Black City
"Help I'm Alive"  Metric  Fantasies
"Thunder Road"  Bruce Springsteen  Born To Run
"Growing Old Is Getting Old"  Silversun Pickups  Swoon
"Post Acid"  Wavves  King of the Beach
"Georgia"  Yuck  Yuck
"Ladyflash"  The Go! Team  Thunder, Lightning, Strike
"Gentlemen"  The Afghan Whigs  Gentlemen
"Freak Scene"  Dinosaur Jr.  Left of the Dial: Dispatches from the 80s Underground
"Heads Will Roll"  Yeah Yeah Yeahs  It's Blitz!
"Within Your Reach"  The Replacements  Hootenanny
"Big Poppa"  The Notorious B.I.G.  Greatest Hits
"Dead Pontoon"  Toro Y Moi  June 2009
"I See You Baby [Fatboy Slim Remix]"  Groove Armada  Vertigo
"Hott Bizness"  Lyrics Born  Later That Day . . .
"Check The Rhime"  A Tribe Called Quest  The Low End Theory
"Angola Bound"  Aaron Neville  The Very Best of Aaron Neville
"Don't Miss That Train"  Sister Wynona Carr  Dragnet For Jesus
"Hard-Core Troubadour"  Steve Earle  I Feel Alright
"Heroes"  David Bowie  Changesbowie
"Simmer Down"  Bob Marley  Songs of Freedom
"Let The Good Times Roll"  Harry Nilsson  Nilsson Schmilsson
"Whipping Post"  The Allman Brothers Band  At Filmore East


Still not posting enough here - it has been difficult to prioritize this little project the way I would like. Anyway - I just ran a half-marathon with my son (and about 20,000 other people, but really - it was with my son).  Since I figured he would leave me behind, I made a race-day playlist so I would have something to listen to while I ran, and rather than my usual alphabet crawl, I just put that up here.  He did stay with me for the first hour of the race, but then he set off and ultimately finished about 10 minutes ahead of me.  We were both hoping to break two hours - he came close, and I was at about 2:11.

Before I got the boy to run with me, I always described running as my best opportunity to listen to hours of music without interruption (I have been a runner of questionable consistency for about 6 years, when in a fit of turning 40, I ran a marathon).   I leave it to the iTunes shuffle to pick the shorter runs, but if I set out for over an hour, I find iTunes likes to say things like "shorter of breath and one day closer to death" a little too often, so I try to lay out the tracks ahead of time.  It helps me mark pace as well if I know what song should be playing when.

The goal in making a playlist is to put some interesting stuff on here that was basically up-tempo enough that I wouldn't fall into a stupor. While I try to pick songs that are thematic and make me happy to hear, I try not to pick anything to cliched or ridiculously "inspirational."    The obvious exceptions are "Thunder Road" and "Heroes" - which I have put on my long run lists for years.  "Thunder Road" marks my halfway point, and "Heroes" marks where I want to be crossing the finish line.  Yes, totally over-the-top and idiotic to want to run under that clock with "we could be heroes just for one day . . ."  I balance that out with a few cheerful prison songs and a few songs about growing old or dying.  "Simmer Down" and "Let The Good Times Roll" serve double duty as either cool-down diddies or cushion between my target time, and when I would start to feel like I might suck as a runner and a human being - 18 minutes of "Whipping Post" is there for that.

Race as metaphor . . .
This was the second half marathon my son and I have run together.  He has always been more physically capable than me - when he was thirteen he ran a 5K at a sub-8 pace, just by waking up and saying "okay lets go ahead and do this."  The only thing I can give him is guidance.  When we ran the first half, he stayed with me the whole time, and if he needed to slow down or rest, we stopped together.  This time, he stayed with me out of courtesy and affection.  This time though, it was clear to both of us that I was holding him back and at about the halfway point he just took off and left me to my playlist.  He ran off, disappearing into a crowd of  people.   But, after it was all done, he found me and we left together.  I guess that is just how things are going to be now.

J'Ai Passe Devant Ta Porte to Jailhouse Rock

"J'Ai Passe Devant Ta Porte"  Michael Doucet & Cajun Brew  A New Orleans Visit: Before Katrina
"Jacqueline"  Franz Ferdinand  Franz Ferdinand
"Jacques Lamure"  Of Montreal  The Gay Parade
"Jag Vet en Dejlig Rosa"  Robyn  Body Talk: Pt. 1
"Jaguar"  John Gregory  The Sound Gallery, Vol. 1
"Jah Live"  Bob Marley  Songs of Freedom
"Jail Guitar Doors"  The Clash  The Clash
"Jailhouse Rock"  Dean Carter  Instant Garage [Mojo]
"Jailhouse Rock"  Elvis Presley  The Complete '68 Comeback Special [x2]
"Jailhouse Rock"  Elvis Presley  Elvis 75


MCA died.  Junior Seau did too.  I am pretty upset about them both.  Mostly for selfish, self-absorbed reasons though.  Junior Seau killed himself at age 43, after a long, successful career in the NFL, and he is not the first to do so (or even the first recently).  Given the increased awareness of head injury and the long-term impact of the game on the people who play it, I am wrestling with whether a sport I have been an avid fan of my entire life is actively killing people.  I am also concerned that if that is not the point, there has been very little concern for whether it is the case.  Professional football is a spectator sport - it doesn't exist without people watching it.  The point of it  is so that people will spend their money in order to witness it. Stadiums seating nearly 100,000 people and billion-dollar television contracts attest to this.  So the violence, the speed of the game, the crushing blows, are at some level because I want it (not me alone, but y'know . . . this is  my navel-gazing so just accept some melodrama).  I can say that I did not know, and that is both fine and true.  The issue is now I do know.  So do I stop watching, do I insist it be fixed, or do I merely live with my own hypocrisy.  (as I sit here today, my money is on the latter).  I honestly live in fear that I will see a young man killed one Sunday afternoon, and I know that is the last time I will watch football on any level.  I also feel like that will be too late.

Adam Yauch died of cancer at 47.  This makes me feel old.  (I am not alone - a lot of my peers commented on the death that a part of their youth or adolescence died with him).  I have now reached the point where my peers are dying of natural causes.  No longer restricted to violence or drugs, now we face the everyday presence of death by just no longer living.  This is the territory of Baby Boomers and Classic Rockers.  I am not ready for an extended future of maintenance prescriptions and annual check-ups.  My least favorite phrase, which I started hearing at the doctor's office a couple of years ago, has to be, "It is a natural part of the aging process."  So now I not only hear it in my creaking bones, or from the doctor when he mentions the disappearing cartilage in some joint or another - now I am reminded of it as the rock stars of my youth shuffle off this mortal coil like Frank Zappa (just shy of age 53, but somehow suddenly almost 20 years gone . . . that went by fast too).